Week 1: A New Hope

Did somebody say something about horror shows? I'm in!

Here, a very short excerpt from a practice session, just enough to ruin your appetite. As a bonus you can sort of see the sequelae of a self-surgery I did on my upper left calf, as a med student many years ago (removed a small lipoma, ended up with a bigger scar😁):

I‘ve chosen the Chopin prelude no 13 because it’s one of my favourite pieces. I‘ve enjoyed playing it just for myself for years but the challenge for me is to properly memorise it and find an interpretation I’m happy with so I can enjoy playing it for others. I‘ve only recently started having piano lessons again after over ten years off (since leaving music college and also developing a chronic health condition which restricts what repertoire I can manage) during which time I’ve kept playing but often without much focus or direction. I hope that picking something small and manageable to work on for this challenge will help me build trust in myself. And I‘m excited to hear what everyone else is working on! 

I’m going to give new hope to Scriabin op.9 no.2 Nocturne. I learned it two years ago and played it halfway something. It was not good and with a lot of very bumpy rubato. It is my first and only Scriabin piece so far. I like it for its pensive tschaikovskyesque mood and the calm that comes over me when I work on it. It’s an “unfinished business” par excellence, because I dropped it quite suddenly, felt I reached my limits and quite discouraged. It has haunted me since and given almost unbearable pangs on conscience. 

Some random practice thoughts, as I am relearning my piece. I notice how hard it is to apply the "spring in the step" that I learned to add to my technique over the past year. This shows how relearning is so much more difficult than learning.

My old sound comes back uninvited. Too heavy, too legato. Yet I know the only way I can correct this is not by thinking technically, but musically. I managed to correct some parts, but most of the time the old habits creep back. I remember an old video here where Dominic said we have to exaggerate during practice in order to just barely make it in performance, something like that. Definitely true. Practice with exaggerated (musical) goals. It has to sound weird during practice so that when performing under pressure it sounds right! I see it like a photo negative (remember those?). It looks horrible, yet after processing (cf. music performance analogy), it comes out just right. So in my case, I have to practice producing a ridiculously light sound, and everything non-legato!